


How to Save a Life

by mustangcandi



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Movie Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 20:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2553983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustangcandi/pseuds/mustangcandi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was sent to kill her.  He made a different call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Save a Life

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this post on Tumblr](http://moonlightmina13.tumblr.com/post/101551266842/agent-barton-was-sent-to) and it reminded me that I had this fic sitting in a folder. I thought I'd share. Prompted by my best friend a year ago when she asked for more Hawkeye/Black Widow fic. Comments and critiques welcome.

Clint Barton.

Code Name: Hawkeye.

He’d earned the name thanks to his gift for seeing more than the average human. The gift wasn’t only in seeing, but processing what those sights meant; perched high above, he could look at any situation and know how that situation would end even before it began. 

He was a soldier: trained to kill and to follow orders. He had orders now to kill the red-head with the razor sharp green eyes. He had the infamous Black Widow in his sights, knowing the order to kill was final. She’d committed crimes against humanity and even now she fought to kill the men surrounding her. And yet, Hawkeye couldn’t release his deadly arrow.

There was something about her. Something in her slight hesitation before she took a life that no one else had ever seen; something that only a sharp shooting, all seeing soldier could see.

She was good at what she did. Very good. And Hawkeye saw in her eyes that she enjoyed the killing. But there was something more… something that told him she knew she was doing this for the wrong reasons. She was doing what she thought she had to because she knew of no other way. 

Hawkeye sat perched, bow and arrow still at the ready, watching… entranced by the fighter he saw in her. In her, he did not see an enemy. He only saw an ally. A kindred spirit. A friend.

And he knew it would be a complete waste to kill something so rare. Yes, he’d been given his order to take a life. But that day, he figured he’d try saving one… and maybe someday the life she saved might just be his own.


End file.
